Cops teargas protesters, kill 1
2008-01-16 14:08
Kisumu - Kenyan police battled hundreds of opposition protesters on Wednesday, killing one, as the opposition defied a ban on rallies against President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election, said witnesses said.
In the western opposition stronghold of Kisumu and the coastal city Mombasa, youths began gathering in the morning, some burning tyres and erecting roadblocks.
Police in Kisumu dispersed a 1 000-strong crowd with teargas, batons and firing bullets in the air. One man was shot dead and another badly hurt, witnesses said.
A Reuters cameraman saw a corpse in the street, with bullet wounds in the back and side.
In Nairobi, police chased a serious of protesters through the central business district, firing teargas and live rounds in the air. The gas seeped into nearby office buildings.
250 000 people homeless
Many Kenyans and expatriates in the capital stayed at home, shopkeepers nailed up windows and traffic was thin.
More than 600 people had died and 250 000 had been left homeless in the turmoil since Kibaki was sworn in after a December 27 vote that Opposition Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga said was rigged.
Police outlawed three days of rallies called by the ODM. In Mombasa, police dispersed some 150 youths, scattering them briefly before they attempted to regroup, said witnesses said.
And gangs threw up roadblocks near Eldoret, in the Rift Valley area worst hit by violence in recent weeks.
"We want Kibaki to resign and pave the way for our rightful President Raila Odinga," said demonstrator Joel Oduor in Kisumu, coughing and crying from teargas.
Kenya's political crisis had jeopardised its democratic credentials, angered donors, driven tourists away and hurt one of Africa's most promising economies.
'We have done our own analysis'
Fuelling doubt over Kibaki's win - officially by 230 000 of 10 million votes cast - a senior United States official said on Wednesday it was impossible to know who won the presidency.
"We have done our own analysis. What it shows is that the result was extremely close and that whoever won probably won with no more than 100 000 votes at the most," Washington's ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, told the Daily Nation.
"It is really not possible to say with certainty who won because the process was not transparent." But he called for power-sharing rather than a new vote or re-count.
Though Kibaki had solidified his position by naming a core cabinet and convening parliament, the opposition received a boost by winning the post of speaker in the assembly on Tuesday.
"Yesterday marked a turning point," Odinga told reporters. "The terrible wrong done Kenyans on 27th of December will not be able to stand. This is an illegitimate presidency."
Though ODM had the most legislators of any one party, it did not have enough to bring a no-confidence vote unless Kibaki-allied parties joined it.